Creating a Powerful Photography Portfolio With Deliberate Planning

It isn’t random, it is deliberate and systematic for best results.

“I am enjoying a nice cup of Sumatran Blend coffee that my daughter made. Delicious, and it is my second cup this morning. (Yep, I have joined the ranks of photographers who insist they tell you about their coffee.) Impressed, you should be.”

I’m sorry. It may or may not ever happen again.

AT THE ‘CREATIVE FACTORY’ WE ARE WORKING ON WAYS TO BUILD DELIBERATE PORTFOLIOS… FAST

Bri shooting in the Anza Borrego. Photography by the author.

OK, it is now the 21st Century and as we all crawl out from beneath this massive boulder called COVID we need to fully engage with the fact that faster, better, cheaper is now the norm.

The old saying:

“You can have it fast, you can have it cheap, or you can have it excellent — pick two.”

… is no longer valid.

Clients want it fast, inexpensive, and as good as you can get.

This used to be sort of impossible but it is not anymore. Of course, there may be some nuance as to what excellence looks like, how “inexpensive” is inexpensive? What does fast mean in this particular gig?

But let’s face it… the ability to do all three is staring us right in the face.

RESPOND, DO NOT REACT.

A reaction to this reality would be “screw that, I won’t do it.”

Got it.

Make sure you practice “Welcome to Walmart, may I help you find something”.

Sorry — that is just the way it is.

And along with this new expected set of deliverables is the ability to turn on a dime, create in the blink of an eye (Premiere Rush, anyone…? Bueller?).

A response to the new demands is to embrace what we have, understand the reality in front of us and begin to push harder toward creating work we can show prospective clients in faster parameters than we have ever dealt with.

THE DELIBERATE AND FAST PORTFOLIO DEFINED

A FASTOLIO?

No, we are good with portfolios but we are going to look at a way to build a strong portfolio in 30 days or less.

HISTORY:

Often portfolios are created from an assembled collection of images we have been making for months or even years. They are our secret stash of visual excitement, and we pull them out, edit them with attention and painstaking criteria in order to fashion them into a page on our website, or a printed book.

We need to be more deliberate.

So we look at the technology we have, the idea machines that we are, and the visual library all around us. We look for inspiration, ideas, context, and to know what is currently being done.

(That is, of course, a two-edged sword. We can become lazy and begin to copy other photographers which is NOT the way to go. We can also decide if everyone is shooting Coke cans on sheepskin that we must hurriedly acquire a bunch of sheepskins and a 6-pack of Coke. Again, no.)

We look to be inspired, for sure… but also to get an idea of what is being done precisely so we do not simply fall into the rut of producing the same ol’ stuff everyone else is.

Yes, of course, we will shoot a trumpet on white for a catalog company, but in our portfolio, we have to show that trumpet in a way that reflects our vision, our aesthetic, and at least present a bit of a surprise to the viewer.

CHOOSE WHAT TYPE OF PORTFOLIO YOU ARE GOING TO BUILD

Food?
Product?
Portrait?
Still Life?
Liquor?

This is your choice, and it should be based on some research for your area as well as how much you like to shoot it. If you are not that enamored of shooting food, then you will be eaten alive by those photographers who simply LIVE to shoot food. I guarantee it. Do what you love.

Using the techniques in Find Photo Clients NOW, identify the types of clients that are around your area. Are you in a technology area, or is it more rural? Is there some manufacturing going on or is it all service businesses like insurance and restaurants? While we can certainly look to do anything we want, if we identify a particular type of client that may be interested in what we do first, the portfolio may be more powerful when we take it to the streets.

For instance, there are several spirits companies, high-end bed and breakfasts, spas, and a handful of designers working with clients all over the region.

So I decide I am going to do a beverage and spirits portfolio.

So my goal is to take my current food portfolio and add 20 images of spirits, beverages, juices, splash shots, and soft drinks.

Just knowing that gets my creativity focused — and I begin.

Start your research and begin looking at websites. When you see something you love, grab a post-it note and sketch your shot… a few lines or a complete sketch, no matter as long as you can decipher it, s’all good.

Let’s say I see a very cool shot of liquor on a food website and I think “That’s cool, I think I need a cool Cointreau bottle for my book.” I grab the post-its and make a quick sketch.

I write “Cointreau bottle and ice cream in a glass. Tilt the bottle and shoot up at them on a glass block.”

I now have a list of props I need. Cointreau, a glass, some “ice cream” and a glass block. It’s important to keep in mind that that shot can change as you are working on it. Serendipity is a great muse as well as providing some creative freedom to burst the whole thing and you end up with something totally different with the Cointreau. Cool.

What we wanted was a liquor bottle and a beautiful presentation… and we got it.

Now create 30–40 more post-it note image ideas.

SAME OL’ SAME OL’ IS NOT WHAT WE NEED MORE OF

We need to make portfolios fast, not taking years to do them, or even months… a matter of weeks is all we need.

Imagine showing a new portfolio of food to a client you saw a month ago when you didn’t show any food at all?

Imagine having 30 new product images in your portfolio 6 weeks after meeting a client that showed interest, but felt you lacked experience.

You guys do not lack experience, you lack opportunities.

And nothing creates opportunities like the actions we can take to CREATE opportunities.

Since we are thinking of ourselves as creative factories we must develop a strong plan, a system for development, a schedule, and the manufacturing floor to build this bad boy on.

ADDING TO AN EXISTING PORTFOLIO: HERE WE GO

The first thing we do is to decide what portfolio we are going to work on or build from scratch.

If you think your food book could be fuller, or have more prepared items then that is where you start. If you have a product portfolio that is mostly small tabletop items like jewelry and watches, you may want to add some larger products and packaging — or power tools if you live in an area where you can see a need for that kind of work. Or maybe you want to fill out your electronics portfolio… all’s good, we are going to make that happen.

Deliberately.

The first thing we are going to do is to create a current image asset so we can see what we have in a single view. No scrolling, no page-turning… we see all the shots in one spot.

Create a contact sheet in Photoshop (Contact Sheet II)

1. Put all your current images in a folder.
2. Name the folder so you can browse to it.
3. Open Photoshop
4. File > Automate > Contact Sheet II
5. Follow the dialog boxes to choose the folder, paper size, how many rows, how many columns, and execute.

Contact Sheet II

Remember, these should be the images you have chosen to leave in your current portfolio and we are going to add to them with the new photos.

Cut the images out and put them where you can get them again.

Take a large whiteboard (foam core, presentation… whatever) and your stack of post-it notes.

Now using some tape and the post-it notes, create the flow of the images for your new portfolio. I do it in a grid that looks like the contact sheet we created with our current images.

AT THIS POINT YOU MAY DECIDE YOU HAVE TOO MANY OF ONE KIND OF IMAGE AND NOT ENOUGH OF ANOTHER

Work with sketches to fill in any gaps you see.

Adjust by either replacing your existing images with new ones, or just add more to the mix in order to have more of a selection down when we are putting it all together.

HERE IS SOMETHINGS TO THINK ABOUT:

1. Always shoot a verticle, horizontal, and square if possible.
2. Shoot a lay-flat if possible.
3. Shoot with a kicker, no kicker, hard main, soft main, soft ambient with a strong shadow… in other words, shoot the heck out of it. Close-ups, full shots, detail shots. You have taken the time to put all this together, now spend some time and get more than one or two shots.
4. Color Pallet. A consistent color pallet is a great way to set yourself apart.
5. Bracket aperture (from shallow to deep DoF so you have a huge body of work to choose from when you are finished.

CREATE YOUR SHOOT SCHEDULE AND GATHER YOUR PROPS.

Get everything together as best you can before you shoot. Maybe a trip or two to the thrift stores, a morning shopping the dollar stores, borrowing some stuff from friends and family, and even a trip to the mall to get stuff that is too small and must be returned… after you shoot it.

Once you have all of this together, shoot the portfolio.

One shot per day means you have a new book by the end of a month.

Two shots a day means you have a new portfolio in two weeks.

(But Don, I shoot highly composited imagery that takes several days to put together. OK, do that. Nothing else happens on any given day until you have finished what you scheduled. This is easily adaptable, but it may take longer for setup shots, portraits, or composite work.)

I would most likely do all the post-processing as I shot every day, but you may decide to do all the post-processing at the end of the shoot for aesthetic or time reasons.

TO CREATE A TOTALLY NEW PORTFOLIO FOLLOW THE STEPS BUT YOU WILL NOT HAVE ANY LEGACY IMAGES TO INCLUDE.

Start designing your portfolio with a simple system.

I would recommend the following;

Lots of research to figure out exactly what you want your portfolio to look like, and who it will address.

• Create a shot list.
• Create 30 post-it notes image ideas
• Gather as many props as you can at one time
• Set shoot schedule.
• Shoot one or two images per day if at all possible.

Having all the props means that if you were planning a natural light image and it is raining that day, you can quickly move to the strobed fragrance shot.

I do not want to make this sound easy, but it is definitely doable.

It is both fast and excellent.

It shows clients that you are more than just a one-off shooter, and that means something these days.

Thank you for reading.

I am a photographer, designer, and photo editor. You can find me at my self-named website or at Project 52 Pro System where I teach commercial photography online. This is our tenth year teaching, and it is the most unique online class you will find anywhere.

You can find my books at Amazon, and I have taught two classes at creativeLIVE.